How To Downrate Many MP3s to a Lower Bitrate?

Posted by JonConley on Wed, 07/25/01 - 11:04:51.

I have looked around and even bought Advanced MP3 Home Studio. It didn't do the trick. I have thousands of mp3s and most of them I encoded in a really high bitrate. I am out of HD space, and would like to downsize all of the ones encoded in a high bitrate. If you have any ideas on how I could do this, please respond or better yet, email me. The more effective the process, the better.

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Re: How To Downrate Many MP3s to a Lower Bitrate?

Posted by Darren Forster on Sat, 09/01/2001 - 19:33.

I've found a couple of ways to downrate MP3's, all are a bit slow, some slower than others.

1. Download WinAMP (FULL) and use the Nullsoft WMA output plug in (WM_OUT.DLL) to turn them into WMA files (these are about half the size of MP3 files but on most high quality stereos you can hear a hiss through the WMA (I can hear the hiss on both my Panasonic and Philips stereo systems)which is annoying, also I've not found a way, yet, to turn WMA's back to MP3s)

2. Download WinAMP (FULL) and use the Nullsoft Disk Writer Plug-in (OUT_DISK.DLL) to turn your MP3's back into WAV files (just select Disk Writer plug in, click configure and tell it where to put the WAV files). You need about 50Mb free on your hard disk per WAV file. Then use a program like AudioCatalyst (or probably MP3 Home Studio) to turn the WAV files back into MP3s at a lower bitrate.

and finally

3. Go to Live365 and download their loader program (I think you have to sign up to be a broadcaster first). Run their loader program and it gives you a couple of options for the bitrate (T1/DSL/ISDN/Cable 56Kbps, 56k modem 32Kbps, 33k modem 24Kbps or 28k modem 16Kbps), if you tick the box Convert only and click on Temp Folder, it places the files you select at a lower bitrate in that folder. The only bad side with this is that it's limited to 56Kbps tops which doesn't sound very good (even if you drop the stereo), not as bad as WMA though, and it takes ages to encode.

:If you have any ideas on how I could do this, please respond or better yet, email me. The more effective the process, the better.

It's easy...

Posted by Steve...R on Wed, 07/25/2001 - 11:18.

The way I do it is to uncompress the files into there original form and then re-compress them with a decent Mp3 encoder. (NOTE: this will not revive the quality lost during the original Mp3 compression process). There are utilities you can download from this site to encode/decode Mp3's so go to it... ;0)

Remember though, if you ever uncompress an Mp3 and then try to encode it at a higher bit rate(i.e. 128 to 192), the quality will not improve, but the file size will increase. As you are going from a higher bit rate to a lower one, you will lose some quality although HD space versus quality is just one of those things.

CyA!

Steve...R

Re: It's easy...

Posted by declau on Thu, 07/26/2001 - 03:32.

that's exactly hat i said.
declau

Re: How To Downrate Many MP3s to a Lower Bitrate?

Posted by Declau on Wed, 07/25/2001 - 11:16.

Get a software like music match or any other.
Convert to wav and then reconvert to mp3 with a lower rate.
mp3s are compressed files with fixed attributes; so you can't do much with them unless you get them into an uncompressed format.
Unfortunately this is going to be a long task.
Declau